BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO POWERPOINT

PowerPoint is an easily accessible technology used to create and present visual presentations.

PEDAGOGICAL ADVANTAGES

On this page you will not find “do’s and don’ts” about PowerPoint or how best to convey knowledge through slideshows. As a lecturer, you are most likely already familiar with some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with using PowerPoint in teaching. Instead, the following describes some of the possibilities available in PowerPoint when used as a learning technology. The intention is that you may find inspiration for new ways of using PowerPoint in your teaching.

As a lecturer, you can, for example, use PowerPoint by sharing your slides in advance with students or printing handouts to distribute. This helps and supports students in actively taking notes during your lecture. Some lecturers, however, find that publishing or distributing PowerPoints makes it harder for students to stay focused on the teaching in the moment. As a lecturer, it is a matter of navigating this, in some courses or programmes it may make sense to distribute them beforehand, while in others you should wait until after the lecture has finished. This may depend on the objectives of your teaching session or the composition of your students.

Another way to use PowerPoint is to manage a discussion while simultaneously anchoring it in the PowerPoint show. In this way, you actively involve and engage students in the lecture, and they will afterwards have access to the points you noted together. This could, for example, be calculations, methodological or theoretical suggestions, advantages or disadvantages in a given case, and so forth.

As a lecturer, you can also divide students into groups and have them prepare a PowerPoint presentation to be presented. You may, for instance, predefine the themes students should address and set them up in a PowerPoint template, while leaving the specific topics they choose to present open.

The advantages of this include that students actively engage with and discuss the material in groups. They are thereby activated and involved, gain practice in speaking in front of an audience, and finally, if you allow students to give one another feedback, you also help them train their feedback skills.

ACCESS

Microsoft PowerPoint is part of the Office 365 suite. If you wish to access Office 365, you can find information on how to log in here.